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John, Employment Lawyer

Category: Employment Law

Satisfied Customers: 3280

Experience: Exclusively practice labor and employment law.

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THIS QUESTION SHOULD BE ANSWERED BY A MANAGEMENT SIDE LABOR

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THIS QUESTION SHOULD BE ANSWERED BY A MANAGEMENT SIDE LABOR LAWYER.

One of my friend's son (X) works as a stage hand in New York City.He works at very "high class" places like Lincoln Center, NY Symphony, etc.All of this work at these theaters is performed by stage hands who aremembers of a very powerful labor union. The waiting list to get into thisunion is probably 10 years.Now the union approached X and told him he could stay on the job(s), buthe was going to be a "supervisor" or at least they would say he was one.I think they MAY BE trying to help X because the collective bargainingagreement has a union security clause and X couldn't work on the jobwithout being a member of the union, which he could not be formany years. And of course he can't be a "real" supervisor because heis just out of college and learning the business.Assuming that the employer goes along with this, either implicitly orexplicitly, do you see any problems for X here? Thanks

This is an odd situation and not something you usually hear of - a union attempting to essentially diminish its own membership. But it would have no real detriment to your son's friend.

I'll explain further. The union is the exclusive agent for all stage employees (whatever classes of workers) but it cannot represent managers of such employees. Thus, by being named a manager, the thought is that he could continue doing that work even though he's not in reality a manager, and not have to go on this waiting list. Now, the truly strange part of this is that whomever in the union is offering this must know that son's friend will not be a member of the union and not paying dues; thus the union is out one position in membership in dues - diminishing its membership. There is no recourse against the misclassified employee. The union usually in such a case either grieves misclassification (to arbitration) under the terms of its collective bargaining agreement or files the matter as an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board. But in any case, the remedy is to remove the misclassified employee and allow the position to be bid on by union members under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, which you state has a waiting list for the position. There would be no financial penalty or the like to your son's friend...although he would be out of a job in the event the union successfully challenged the misclassification.

I believe this answers your question. However, if you need clarification or have follow-up questions regarding this matter, I will be happy to continue our conversation – simply reply to this answer. If you are otherwise satisfied with my response, please leave a positive rating as it is the only way I am able to get credit for my answers. Thank you, XXXXX XXXXX wish you all the best with this matter.

That's tough to say - it must be that management is complicit in the matter somehow because a union has literally no say in who management hires as a supervisor. I'm not in a position to know why management would agree to it - possibly it's a union run company or management has agreed to allow this in limited instances. I would agree, the less said about it the better for the kid, at least for now, as otherwise he's not going to have a job....and these days jobs are tough to come by.

I will tell you that...the things you have to go through to be an Expert are quite rigorous.

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